Artists

Bill

Austin, Texas

Rick Dinsmore tells us his name at the beginning of a tape we find in an unmarked box in the Sonobeat archives. He gives the date as July 11th, but he doesn't mention the year (we've made an educated guess that it's 1975). He tells us the song is his original composition and is about a friend named "Bill"; hence, the title. The recording's instrumentation is sparse: just standard guitar and electric bass accompanying Rick's story song about a man, a bar, a dancer, a few drinks, and a derringer. This story doesn't end well.

Rick, whose recording career begins in Los Angeles in the early '70s, moves to Austin in the mid-'70s, where almost immediately he performs and is a winner at the 1975 Kerville Folk FestivalKerrville, in the heart of the Central Texas Hill Country about 100 miles west of Austin, is home to the Kerrville Folk Festival, founded in 1972. The Festival has been an annual event ever since, drawing tens of thousands of attendees each year., appearing there on May 25th. Sonobeat co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr. (who we're absolutely certain is not the "Bill" who's the subject of the song) records Rick at Sonobeat's Blue Hole Sounds studio just outside Liberty Hill, Texas, 30 miles north of Austin. The recording is likely made within a couple of months following Rick's performance at the Festival, which is run by Bill's friend Rod Kennedy, and it's possible that Rod is responsible for introducing Rick and Bill.

Rick returns to Los Angeles in the '90s but in 2006 returns to Texas and now lives in Georgetown, Texas, just up Interstate 35 from Austin, performing throughout Central Texas. When he returns to Texas, he brings his "true love" Jocelyn (Jos) Callard, who he's met in Los Angeles. Today they perform and record together as, simply, Dinsmore-Callard.